BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px;
}JAS, list
You are missing my point.
First - Don't nitpick words such as 'assert' - which you claim to
mean 'unsupported'. It doesn't mean that, but after a while, one gets
tired of the constant 'assertion' that every analysis of Peirce on
this list MUST be held up by, supported by, The Text and quotations
from Peirce. Such cherry-picking ignores the substantive meaning of
the whole of Peirce's work. And by now, most of us must be
'reasonably' familiar with Peirce - that we don't need to constantly
fling quotations around.
And second - as I specifically said - I wasn't talking about the
Final Interpretant as mediated by an anthropomorphic view. That's a
very different semiosic act, where this anthropomorphic agent must
correlate his Interpretant with his sensation from the Dynamic
Object. I'm not talking about this but about a much deeper and more
generative semiosis.
I was talking about the Final Interpretant as mediated by the
self-organized complexity of the semiosic process. That is an
entirely different thing - and is well substantiated by Peirce's
outline of the semiosic act, of the role of mediation, and - of the
development of our universe, of its habits, of the chance-deviations
of freedom and of the brute deviations by 2ns. As Peirce himself
noted - this does not need a human agent or indeed, any consciousness
whatever - it is the basic Mind of the universe in its semiosic
process.
As for your theism, and your repeated attempts to correlate what I
consider Peirce's quite different view of god and the universe, with
your own - I leave that to you, as we would never agree on such a
perspective.
Edwina
On Tue 23/07/19 9:36 AM , Jon Alan Schmidt jonalanschm...@gmail.com
sent:
Edwina, John, List:
ET: That's why I assert that there can be no 'Final Interpretant'
and no ultimate Truth - not from ignorance but from the complexity of
the interactions and data.
I appreciate the admission that this is a bare assertion,
unsupported by any quotations from Peirce. On the contrary ...
CSP: You certainly opine that there is such a thing as Truth.
Otherwise, reasoning and thought would be without a purpose. (CP
2.135; 1902).
CSP: Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as
truth, or he would not ask any question. That truth consists in a
conformity to something independent of his thinking it to be so, or
of any man's opinion on that subject. But for the man who holds this
second opinion, the only reality there could be would be conformity
to the ultimate result of inquiry. (CP 5.211, EP 2:240; 1903)
As discussed at length by Lane in his book, Peirce's considered view
was that "ultimate Truth" is whatever would become permanently
settled belief upon infinite inquiry by an infinite community--a
regulative hope, the telos of all semeiosis (Final Interpretant),
which may or may not correspond to any actual effect (Dynamic
Interpretant).
JFS: I used an argument based on Cantor's set theory, which Peirce
knew very well: as the number of elements in a set grows, the number
of ways of combining them grows exponentially.
Yes, but Peirce ultimately rejected Cantor's "pseudo-continuum" (CP
6.176; 1908). I have been suggesting recently that the entire
Universe as a vast Argument is instead a "true continuum" (CP 6.170;
1902) and a "perfect continuum" (CP 4.642 & 7.535n6; both 1908) in
accordance with Peirce's late definitions. This would entail that it
is not "built up" of discrete elements at all, but rather "contains no
definite parts" (CP 6.168; 1903) in itself, only "material parts" (CP
6.174; 1908)--i.e., potential parts, which we can "mark off" from the
whole and from each other as we please (cf. R S30 [Copy T:6-7]; c.
1906).
JFS: Implication: The complexity of the universe will always be
exponentially bigger and more complex than any intelligent being in
that universe. No such being can ever represent, much less
understand all the complexity of the universe it occupies. Question:
What does that imply about God?
It implies that if, as Peirce professed to believe, God is "Really
creator of all three Universes of Experience" (CP 6.452, EP 2:434;
1908), then He is not "any intelligent being in that universe." As I
have pointed out many times before, Peirce explicitly affirmed in
several manuscript drafts for "A Neglected Argument" that by "God" he
meant "the Being whose attributes are, in the main, those usually
ascribed to Him, omniscience, omnipotence, infinite benignity, and a
Being not immanent in the Universes of Matter, Mind, and Ideas, but
the Sole Creator of every content of them without exception" (R
843:15[1]; 1908). In accordance with my interpretation of Peirce's
blackboard diagram (CP 6.203-208, RLT 261-263; 1898), "the particular
actual universe of existence in which we happen to be" consists of the
possibilities that God freely chooses to "mark off" within the
semeiosic continuum.
CSP: The zero collection is bare, abstract, germinal possibility.
The continuum is concrete, developed possibility. The whole universe
of true and real possibilities forms a continuum, upon which this
Universe of Actual Existence is, by virtue of the essential
Secondness of Existence, a discontinuous mark--like a line figure
drawn on the area of the blackboard. There is room in the world of
possibility for any multitude of such universes of Existence. Even in
this transitory life, the only value of all the arbitrary arrangements
which mark actuality, whether they were introduced once for all "at
the end of the sixth day of creation" or whether as I believe, they
spring out on every hand and all the time, as the act of creation
goes on, their only value is to be shaped into a continuous
delineation under the creative hand, and at any rate their only use
for us is to hold us down to learning one lesson at a time, so that
we may make generalizations of intellect and the more important
generalizations of sentiment which make the value of this world. (RLT
162-163; 1898)
CSP: The generalization of sentiment can take place on different
sides. Poetry is one sort of generalization of sentiment, and in so
far is the regenerative metamorphosis of sentiment. But poetry
remains on one side ungeneralized, and to that is due its emptiness.
The complete generalization, the complete regeneration of sentiment
is religion, which is poetry, but poetry completed. (CP 1.676; 1898)
CSP: I hear you say: "All that is not fact; it is poetry."
Nonsense! Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than
true poetry ... the universe is a vast representamen, a great symbol
of God's purpose, working out its conclusions in living realities …
The Universe as an argument is necessarily a great work of art, a
great poem,--for every fine argument is a poem and a symphony,--just
as every true poem is a sound argument. (CP 1.315 & 5.119, EP
2:193-194; 1903)
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur
Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt [1] -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt [2]
On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 9:42 AM John F Sowa wrote:
On 7/22/2019 8:13 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
> That's why I assert that there can be no 'Final Interpretant' and
no
> ultimate Truth - not from ignorance but from the complexity of the
> interactions and data.
Yes indeed. I used an argument based on Cantor's set theory,
which Peirce knew very well: as the number of elements in a set
grows, the number of ways of combining them grows exponentially.
Assumption: No brain, set of brains, or set of supercomputers
in any universe can ever be as big as the universe itself.
Implication: The complexity of the universe will always be
exponentially bigger and more complex than any intelligent
being in that universe. No such being can ever represent,
much less understand all the complexity of the universe it
occupies.
Question: What does that imply about God?
Answer: Whitehead claimed that God created the universe in order
to understand what would happen. This is a very rough summary,
which Whitehead and others, such as Hartshorne explored in detail.
Conclusion: I believe that Hartshorne had a good reason for
finding Whitehead's process philosophy persuasive.
John
Links:
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[2] http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt
[3]
http://webmail.primus.ca/javascript:top.opencompose(\'s...@bestweb.net\',\'\',\'\',\'\')
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